Chanting can be a powerful and transformative practice of using sound to bring on a meditative experience. The repetition of mantra and sound aids in down-regulating the nervous system and creating space for peace and stillness to arise within. Additionally, chanting is known to have the following
- Helps to Improve Concentration
- Chanting helps to calm the monkey mind by giving it something to focus on both mentally and verbally. With regular chanting, your mind becomes focused on the Sanskrit words instead of everything else. with continued practice, the mind will become more attentive in whatever it focuses on.
- Reduces Stress and Anxiety
- Chanting can provide relief from anxiety and tension. Regular chanting allows you to experience peace from within and be less distracted while doing any form of work.
- Chanting is a practice of meditation and helps you to learn more about yourself and adds meaning to all aspects of your life.
- Rejuvenating & Calming
- Tensions are a regular part of life. But too much anxiety and stress produce toxins in the body leading to harmful physical and mental diseases. And Om chanting eliminates the possibilities of toxin production by reducing stress and making you feel rejuvenated whenever you start chanting. Thus, one of the health benefits of Om chanting is that it makes you feel happy, rejuvenated and pacifies your troubled heart.
- Regular Om chanting also helps to reduce your mood swings and thus improve your work capacity and performance. So, it indicates that with regular Om chanting practice you can improve your personal as well as professional life as well.
- Helps Support the Back and Spine
- Chanting, done in an upright position, helps to tone and strengthen the abdominal muscles and this can help to keep the spine healthy in everyday life.
- Detoxifies Body
- Chanting is a type of meditation, when you regularly perform meditation, it allows the body to function at an optimum level. This will help the body release toxins and impurities efficiently.
- Chanting requires breath regulation and this helps improve blood circulation and oxygen supply to the cells or the body. These are the two important physical benefits of chanting.
- Can Improve Functioning of Heart & Digestive System
- Chanting can help regulate the blood flow to different body parts. Thus, it helps in stabilizing blood pressure. While chanting, the breath, respiration and heartbeat can normalize.
- Regular practice can improve the functioning of the heart and your digestive system.
- Helps Improve Quality of Sleep
- You can improve your sleep and wake up pattern by chanting regularly. As the mind resides in a more peaceful state, the nervous system can reset and recalibrate. Chanting can help with falling asleep quickly, and getting sound and quality sleep.
- Helps Promote Emotionally Stability
- When experiencing worry, anger, frustration, irritation, etc. our work and relationships are impacted. Behavior can become irrational and impractical when the mind is disturbed. Chanting can help balance emotions and allow the mind to operate from a more altruistic place, as opposed the fight/flight/freeze state of a mind ruled by worry, anger, frustration, irritation, etc.
- Improves Reasoning Ability, Reduces Negativity
- A distracted mind has a tendency to think negative first whenever something unexpected happens. Regular chanting helps keep the mind calm and helps stay present/positive through uncertainty. When you are no longer ruled by your reactionary mind, your reasoning ability improves and you are able to make more grounded and meaningful decisions.
For a initial chanting practice, try repeating this mantra Oṃ 108 times, for one week continuously.
This can be the mantra you continue with indefinitely. If you could like a slightly longer mantra, you might try:
Oṃ Gaṃ Gaṇapataye Namaḥ
This is a chant which invites in knowledge of our own innate capacity to overcome obstacles. It acknowledges that we each have the power Gaṇeśa represents contained within ourselves. It’s already there, we just have to awaken to our own divine nature.
A gentle way to ease into a chanting practice is to begin with 12 repetitions, for one week continuously. After that, you might try 36 repetitions for two full weeks. Next step could be to complete 108 rounds of the chant daily (or twice daily).
